I beg your pardon, Chris? (UPDATED AND CORRECTED)

Chris Beer (Mason Conservative) is a blogger I enjoy and respect; he is also a friend.  However, I have serious issue with his Bearing Drift post on the AG race.  Actually, the Bearing Drift post in question came from Chris Obenshain – mea culpa.  Chris O. is also a good blogger, but I’ve never met him.

Chris is not happy with some of us Cuccinelli supporters (we know how we are) who have sent criticism in John Brownlee’s direction.  Chris even went so far as to call them “personal attacks.”

Let’s take a closer look at this.

All of this began when Shaun Kenney insisted John Brownlee isn’t as pro-life as Cuccinelli is (Bearing Drift).  That is, in point of fact, true.  Brownlee tried to respond, and got his facts wrong.  I called him on it.  If that’s a “personal attack,” then the English language underwent serious revision while I was asleep last night.

As for Bronwlee’s top donor, once again, none of that is in dispute.  Chris may question the relevance of the information, but to call that a “personal attack” is, again, to stretch the language.

Chris himself seems to acknowledge this when he notes “that the candidates not be vetted completely.”  Yet what we call vetting, he calls something else:

. . . it strikes me as bizarre that when a person who has held a position of trust for as long as Brownlee has and, by all accounts, has acquitted himself admirably therein, the first reaction by some Republicans is to immediately disbelieve everything he says based, not on a record that contradict those statements, but rather upon the absence of a public record.

First of all, we have good reason to take issue with what Brownlee says when he makes such a dramatic mistake.  Secondly, in the aforementioned “absence of a public record,” we have no choice but to look to other factors that might normally be given less credence.  This is especially true given that the Attorney General handles a great deal more issues that Brownlee is discussing (thus his word obviously falls short on issues left unaddressed), and that Brownlee’s “Issues” page remains – as of 2:15PM on July 30, 2008 – completely blank (ditto).

The issue here isn’t whether or not Brownlee would make a better AG than whomever the Democrats nominate.  Of course he would.  But a better AG than Ken Cuccinelli?  No way.